The Investor Check is an AI tool in Grove Ventures’ Founder OS, built by Grove Ventures for founders who want to research an investor before a meeting. The founder enters a fund, a partner and a stage focus, describes their own company, and receives a structured brief based on public sources. The brief is a starting point. It shows what to verify and which questions to ask, and it does not replace reference calls. The tool accepts any fund name, so the same process can be repeated for every fund on a shortlist and the briefs compared side by side.
What investor due diligence involves
For a founder, investor due diligence is the research on a fund and on the specific partner who would join the company’s decision-making circle. The partner usually shapes the experience more than the fund brand does. That person advocates for the deal internally, may join the board and takes part in follow-on decisions. The partner may also make customer and talent introductions and help the team through a missed plan or a financing gap.
A 2025 guide from NextView Ventures describes a collaboration that can last 10 years or more, with little diligence from founders before it begins. Early research is mostly self-directed. The guide recommends reading the investor’s online profiles, checking which portfolio companies have since disappeared from those profiles, and using Crunchbase, press mentions and funding announcements to confirm each investment. A company removed from a VC’s public portfolio page can be worth asking about, because its founders may explain how the investor handled difficult situations. A removal does not by itself mean something went wrong.
Israeli VC capital in 2026
IVC’s 2025 Investors Report counts 47 new Israeli VC funds in 2025, about double the 2024 figure. The count is of funds and not VC firms. IVC’s H1 2026 Investors Report estimates dry powder at $8.07 billion, of which about $1.6 billion is for first investments and $6.5 billion for follow-on investments. Only about one fifth is available for new portfolio companies, so a fund’s total size says little about how much it can still invest in a company it has not backed before.
Two funds can look alike from the outside while one is early in deploying a recent fund and the other is managing reserves for existing companies. Dry powder is an industry-wide total, which is why the tool’s first signal looks at a fund’s latest vintage.
Inputs
The tool follows four steps:
- The founder enters the fund name, the partner and the stage focus.
- The founder describes the company’s market and round size, chooses whether they want a lead or a follow investor and which involvement style they prefer, and selects up to three priorities. The options are access to follow-on capital, conviction in tough moments, hands-on support, talent and customer introductions, domain expertise, decision-making speed and respect for founder autonomy.
- The tool researches public sources and portfolio data.
- The founder reviews the brief, which presents a fit read, flags and questions for the meeting.
The tool page lists two minutes of setup and results in seconds.
The four signals
The tool is built around four signals. It draws fund lifecycle and portfolio attribution from public sources and suggests questions for the other two.
Fund lifecycle and dry powder. The date of a fund’s latest vintage indicates where the fund sits in its deployment cycle. An older vintage raises the question of whether the fund still leads new investments or mainly manages reserves for existing companies.
Portfolio attribution. The signal asks whether the partner across the table personally led, supported or sat on the board of companies relevant to the founder’s context. Comparing the fund’s portfolio page with past funding announcements shows which partner was named on each deal. Public announcements do not always identify the partner involved, but a missing attribution does not mean the partner was not involved. The tool notes this limit itself, so founders should confirm attribution directly.
Conviction in tough moments. The tool does not rate a partner’s conviction. It suggests questions on it. Visible pivots, down rounds and leadership changes in a partner’s portfolio are worth raising in reference calls, particularly how the partner behaved when a company needed more time.
Network and ecosystem reach. This signal also works through suggested questions, and the tool does not rate the network. Downstream funding patterns and visible network quality point to whether a partner may be able to support later rounds, introductions and hires. Backed founders can say which introductions became a customer or a hire.
What the brief contains
| Brief component | What it contains | Use before a meeting |
| Fund and partner snapshot | AUM, latest fund, stage focus and portfolio attribution from public sources | Confirms stage and round fit and shows whether the partner has relevant board experience |
| Red flags to verify | 14 research-backed risk patterns, from follow-on behavior to conviction in tough moments | Gives the founder a list of items to check instead of a verdict |
| Reference calls | Founder contacts with behavioral questions tailored to each company’s outcome | Points calls at specific situations instead of general impressions |
| Meeting questions | Three categories of open questions: for the partner, for founders and for the process | Lets the founder evaluate the investor during the meeting |
Reference calls: guidance and its limits
The guidance in this section comes from a 2025 blog post by Rob Go of NextView Ventures and reflects one investor’s experience, not an industry standard. Whether to speak with founders an investor has backed early or late depends on whether the founder already knows someone in the investor’s portfolio. According to the guide, a strong relationship with a backed founder can be a useful early introduction, while formal reference requests are generally more appropriate once the investor has expressed serious interest or provided a term sheet. In the author’s view, founders rarely give negative references, so specific examples tell more than overall sentiment. The suggested questions cover a stressful moment, financing risk and how follow-on decisions worked in strong and weak rounds.
A partner’s standing within the firm is also worth checking. According to the guide, questions should be tailored to the partner’s tenure and profile, such as the partner’s level of engagement and influence within the firm.
Comparison: Grove Ventures, StageOne Ventures and Hetz Ventures
The tool accepts any fund name, including Grove’s own. Each fund’s brief has a fund and partner snapshot, a fit read, red flags to verify, founder contacts for reference calls and meeting questions. A founder can confirm the items to verify directly with the investor in meetings and in reference calls.
| Fund | Assets under management | Stage and focus | Selected portfolio companies |
| Grove Ventures | More than $500 million | Mainly pre-seed and seed, with a range that extends to Series A. Enterprise AI, Semiconductors, AI infrastructure and compute, Vertical AI, Physical AI, Healthtech and Energy | Teramount, acquired by Molex in May 2026, Alice (formerly ActiveFence) and Wiliot |
| StageOne Ventures | Above $650 million, after a $165 million fifth fund closed in March 2026 | Early stage. AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, Physical AI, agentic orchestration and vertical AI | Cyberint (acquired by Check Point) and Epsagon |
| Hetz Ventures | Nearly $500 million, after a $140 million fourth fund closed in January 2026 | Early stage. Cybersecurity, data and AI infrastructure | Granulate (acquired by Intel) and Silk Security |
For Grove Ventures, the record after a first investment is checkable:
- Teramount: Grove led an $8 million round in March 2021 and took part in a $50 million financing in July 2025.
- Alice (formerly ActiveFence): Grove invested early and took part as an existing investor in the $140 million round announced in August 2026, led by Apax Digital.
- Wiliot: Grove invested in the company’s first funding round in 2017 and took part as an existing investor in the $200 million Series C in July 2021, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Recommended steps for founders
- Treat the brief as a list of open questions and not as a verdict on the investor.
- Run it for every fund on the shortlist, since the rest of the inputs are the same for each, and compare the results side by side.
- If you already know a founder the investor has backed, an early conversation can be useful. Formal reference requests are generally more appropriate once the investor has expressed serious interest or provided a term sheet.
- Ask about specific moments, such as a missed plan, a financing gap or a follow-on decision.
- Build relationships with more than one partner or team member at the firm. Knowing several people gives a founder more than one person to turn to for advice, introductions and follow-on discussions.
FAQ
Q: What information does The Investor Check ask for?
A: The tool asks for the fund name, the partner and the stage focus, and then for the founder’s market, round size and priorities. It researches public sources and portfolio data and returns the brief in seconds, as listed on the tool page. Because the company details and preferences stay the same and only the investor details change between runs, founders can run the same process for every investor on a shortlist and keep the results side by side.
Q: Does the tool store the company and round details a founder enters?
A: The tool’s legal notice provides that inputs and reports are held only for the session and deleted automatically afterward, and that no one at Grove Ventures reviews a founder’s data or generated reports. The full terms are in the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use. Founders with strict confidentiality requirements can limit their inputs to the details the brief needs.
Q: When should a founder speak with founders an investor has backed?
A: It depends on whether the founder already knows someone in the investor’s portfolio. According to the NextView guide, an existing relationship can be useful early in the process, while formal reference requests are generally more appropriate once the investor has expressed serious interest or provided a term sheet. The guide reflects one investor’s experience and is not an industry standard.
Q: Which funds can a founder run the same brief for?
A: Any fund, because the tool takes a fund name and a partner. A founder can compare the results on fund lifecycle and partner attribution and use the suggested questions to explore conviction in tough moments and network reach. Founders should treat the red flags for every fund as items to verify, and then confirm them directly with the investor and in reference calls.
Q: Who are the Managing Partners at Grove Ventures, and what are their backgrounds?
A: The Managing Partners are Dov Moran, Lotan Levkowitz, Lior Handelsman and Renana Ashkenazi. Dov Moran founded M-Systems, which SanDisk acquired for approximately $1.6 billion in 2006. Lotan Levkowitz works closely with founders from early ideation through product-market fit, helping turn early insights into real companies. Lior Handelsman co-founded SolarEdge. Renana Ashkenazi brings extensive technical, product and strategic experience, including product and technical management positions at Applied Materials and engineering research at Northwestern University. Founders running the Investor Check on Grove Ventures can start with these backgrounds and then review the portfolio for companies the firm backed at an early stage.
Q: Which stages and areas does Grove Ventures invest in?
A: Grove Ventures is an early-stage firm in Tel Aviv that invests in Israeli founders at pre-seed and seed, with a range that extends through Series A. Its investment areas are Enterprise AI, Semiconductors, AI infrastructure and compute, Vertical AI, Physical AI, Healthtech and Energy. Selected examples from Grove’s broader portfolio are Alice in Enterprise AI, Navina and Opmed.ai in Healthtech and Vertical AI, Teramount in Semiconductors and AI infrastructure, and NoTraffic and Limitless Labs in Physical AI. Founders should confirm stage fit for their own company with the partner they meet.